New Gamespy owners shutting down game servers left and right

The new owners of Gamespy, Glu, have pulled the plug on servers attached to older games such as Neverwinter Nights, Sniper Elite, and Star Wars: Battlefront.

According to a detailed report on PCGamesN, Glu – which purchased the Gamespy middleware tech from IGN back in August for $2.7 million – is shutting down the servers despite the middleware being required to operate the game online.

Sniper Elite developer Rebellion, explained on its forums why multiplayer support for the game suddenly ceased without warning.

“A few weeks ago, the online multiplayer servers for Sniper Elite were suddenly switched off by Glu, the third-party service we had been paying to maintain them,” reads a statement from producer Steve Hart. “For the past seven years we have run these servers at a cost to ourselves so that fans of Sniper Elite could continue to play online for free.

“This decision by Glu was not taken in consultation with us and was beyond our control. We have been talking to them since to try and get the servers turned back on. We have been informed that in order to do so would cost us tens of thousands of pounds a year – far in excess of how much we were paying previously.

“We also do not have the option to take the multiplayer to a different provider, because the game relies on Glu and Gamespy’s middleware, the entire multiplayer aspect of the game would have to be redeveloped by us, again, at the cost of many tens of thousands of pounds. While we are not happy about the situation, as an independent developer we simply do not have the resources to pay the massive costs of new servers along with redeveloping a seven-year-old game.”

Gamespy, when asked by users on Facebook why support for Sniper Elite was dropped, replied the following: “Neither Namco or Rebellion want to continue support for the game – I’d check with them on why they don’t.”

Other games such as Microsoft Flight Simulator X, Wings of War, Battlestations: Midway, Lord of the Rings: War of the Ring, Swat 4, and Star Wars: Battlefront have also been the recipient of vanishing server support.

Glu’s reply regarding dropped server support for Star Wars: Battlefront was met with the following statement: “Lucas Arts no longer supports this title and as we’re a service provider to them we have disabled the game.”

Read over the user complaints and questions regarding the deactivated servers on Gamespy’s Facebook page here.